The Best Battery Life Laptops for 2019

Don't be left without juice just when you need it most. We've tested hundreds of laptops to find the ones that last the longest between charges. These battery-life champs will take you through a day of work, as well as a night on the couch.

Bottom Line: With the addition of an Intel Core i9 processor, the sleek 15-inch MacBook Pro is now one of the most powerful desktop-replacement laptops you can buy, making it an excellent choice for well...

Bottom Line: Business convertibles don't come any better than the HP EliteBook x360 1030 G3, an executive 2-in-1 that combines ample power with a sunny 13.3-inch screen and a snappy keyboard in a petite ...

Bottom Line: The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon offers premium features in a slim and attractive package that business users will love-just be prepared to open your wallet wide for this top-notch ultraportabl...

Bottom Line: With a modest speed boost and a new color choice, the Microsoft Surface Pro 6 may not have changed much from the previous iteration, but what we loved about this 2-in-1 convertible then, we ...

Bottom Line: Swathed in swanky leather and kitted out with a new, power-efficient screen, HP's Spectre Folio is a unique, innovative ultraportable. Alas, its styling and pricing are as over-the-top as it...

Tom BrantThe Best Battery Life Laptops for 2019Don't be left without juice just when you need it most. We've tested hundreds of laptops to find the ones that last the longest between charges. These battery-life champs will take you through a day of work, as well as a night on the couch.

Get the Most Battery Life for Your Buck

How long a laptop lasts on its internal battery is one of the most important considerations for PC shoppers. Business travelers and students are often at the mercy of their computer's remaining juice, since so many conference rooms, airplanes, and classrooms are woefully short on accessible power outlets. Just a few years ago, it was necessary to buy and charge an external battery pack to get long battery life, or to insist on a machine with a removable, swappable battery. But today, even many thin ultraportables with sealed-shut chassis show impressive endurance away from an AC outlet.

These recent improvements in laptop battery life are thanks to CPUs and other components that are more power-efficient than ever. (It's not just new battery technology that deserves the credit.) That's especially true of Intel's 8th Generation Core processors, the company's newest mobile chips at this writing. They power almost all of the longest-lasting models currently on our list.

A laptop that can last for more than eight hours without a trip to a power plug should be enough to get you through a day's work, but that's not good enough to make it to the upper echelons today. Each of the laptops and 2-in-1s we've selected lasted for more than 13 hours on our tests, which means that they can survive a full day at the office and still offer plenty of juice for your commute or for watching videos on the couch. (Maybe both.)

In addition to being a critical specification, battery life is one of the toughest to measure. If you're watching movies all day long, you'll get far more unplugged time than someone who's editing images nonstop in Photoshop. We test battery life based on a very specific scenario: watching movies stored locally at 50 percent screen brightness and with airplane mode turned on. If you're frequently performing more CPU-intensive or graphics-hammering tasks, you'll want to shave an hour or two off of our results.

Know Your Form Factor

Our top 10 list is stacked with traditional laptops and convertible designs with 360-degree display hinges. Detachable Windows tablets tend to be underrepresented, and for good reason: There's simply no room for a large battery in such a small enclosure. One notable exception is the Microsoft Surface Book 2, which includes two separate batteries, one in the tablet and one in the keyboard base. Together, they eked out an impressive 17 hours of battery life in our testing, but you'll get far less than that if you're using the tablet by itself.

Of course, no matter what kind of laptop you're in the market for, you can always add a few minutes or a few hours to your unplugged time by changing your computing habits. It's a bit like driving more conservatively to save gas. For some ideas, take a look at our tips for improving your laptop's battery life.

Want the Best Battery Life? Consider a Mac

Apple's MacBook and MacBook Pro lineups have a reputation for excellent battery endurance, and Cupertino's current offerings are no exception. All of the portable Macs we've tested thus far in 2018 can manage more than 14 hours away from an outlet. Which one you should choose depends on your budget, your portability needs, and your usage patterns, but you can't go wrong on the battery-life front with any Apple ultraportable. (And remember, Macs can run Windows, too.)

Other manufacturers are more hit-and-miss. While the top Windows-machine battery-life honors of the moment go a premium Lenovo Yoga model, Lenovo also sells several less-expensive variants that run down much more quickly. We're also seeing an emerging class of "always on" machines based on low-power Qualcomm Snapdragon processors that have outlasted most Intel-based Windows and macOS laptops we have tested. (We've tested two of these so far, from Asus and Samsung; one made our list above.) But know that these laptops are meant more for lightweight mobile computing with a continuous internet connection, and are far from power models meant for CPU musclework.

If you have a long plane flight, a conference, or a final-exam period ahead of you, or if you're just too busy to linger around a power outlet for long enough, any of these laptops will keep you productive throughout the day and into the evening. For a look at the wider laptop landscape, check out our very latest laptop reviews, as well as our picks for the top business notebooks and the best budget laptops.

Bottom Line: With the addition of an Intel Core i9 processor, the sleek 15-inch MacBook Pro is now one of the most powerful desktop-replacement laptops you can buy, making it an excellent choice for well-heeled, on-the-go creative pros.

Bottom Line: Business convertibles don't come any better than the HP EliteBook x360 1030 G3, an executive 2-in-1 that combines ample power with a sunny 13.3-inch screen and a snappy keyboard in a petite 2.76-pound package.

Bottom Line: The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon offers premium features in a slim and attractive package that business users will love-just be prepared to open your wallet wide for this top-notch ultraportable laptop.

Bottom Line: With a modest speed boost and a new color choice, the Microsoft Surface Pro 6 may not have changed much from the previous iteration, but what we loved about this 2-in-1 convertible then, we still love now.

Bottom Line: Swathed in swanky leather and kitted out with a new, power-efficient screen, HP's Spectre Folio is a unique, innovative ultraportable. Alas, its styling and pricing are as over-the-top as its performance is underwhelming.

About the Author

As a hardware analyst, Tom tests and reviews laptops, peripherals, and much more at PC Labs in New York City. He previously covered the consumer tech beat as a news reporter for PCMag in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, where he rode in several self-driving cars and witnessed the rise and fall of many startups. Before that, he worked for PCMag's s... See Full Bio

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